Hidden Agendas

Yesterday in a conversation with a friend, a question was raised and I didn’t have an answer. I believe you could bring light into this question.

In the world of healing sexuality, I believe an unhealthy male sexual healer would still want to take something from his client—perhaps to satisfy his own pleasure at the expense of the woman’s pleasure. I would say this man’s ego and personal needs interfere with her process, reducing her sense of safety and don’t belong in a therapeutic setting.

Now what does this look like for a woman practitioner? What is it a woman sexual healer would take from a man? Like the immature male practitioner the immature female practitioner would want to serve her need—what is it that a woman might take from him?

Thank you, —Rebecca

Sexual healing is such a broad term that it needs to be qualified with further explanation of what is happening in the session(s) with the client.

There are also perceived differences between informal—casual and formal—professional practitioners. It’s really all about the intention for the session and what the client wants to experience.

Sexual healing could be divided into broad categories of:

Casual-recreational-discovery (light)

Support, coaching, learning, enrichment (medium)

Deep psyche, shadow, abuse wound healing, transformational (heavy)

Frequently, there is also a different structure to these sessions—with the light and medium versions of sessions often including mutual touch and pleasure—depending on what the client wants to work on.

To protect a client from being re-traumatized it is vitally important that the container—session boundaries and behaviors—be thoroughly discussed, understood, and agreed upon before a session takes place. No matter what type of session or the container that is agreed upon, a sexual healer will want to be prepared for any emergence of deep wounding and know how to handle it and support the client through processing and integration.

Healing at some level can occur in any of these sessions; and while always important, the “deeper you go” with the client the more critical it is that the practitioner be exemplary with his/her integrity and free of surreptitious motives that distort or distract the healing the client is seeking.

Uncovering a Hidden Agenda

Hidden agendas can take many forms and are unique to each practitioner based on their unconscious motives or unhealed wounds—or in some cases delusional fantasies.

Sexual healers of either sex can have the delusion of a “savior complex” and/or get wrapped up in power issues. One of many possible hidden agendas/motivations for men is identifying as a “stud” because he can satisfy many women (like having a harem, or a stable of lovers).

Similarly, a female sexual healer could have personal issues manifest around her autonomy and interpersonal interactions with men—e.g. experiencing the thrill of “sowing her oats” as a “liberated woman” because she gets to act intimately with many men.

Women practitioners can also have other ulterior motives or psychological “rackets” going on around control and power which could include “getting back at men” by making them pay for sex (or sexual attention). They can also become influenced by the glamor or delusion of “being a sexual priestess” and instead of keeping the focus on the client’s intense intimate, vulnerable, and personal wounds—miss or ignore the client’s emotional-psychological reactions and needs. Women can also “check-out” and go off on a trip of sexual energy—blasting off like a rocket as it were—again, not being present with the delicate mix of activated wounds, fears, and desires.

My book “Safe Sexual Healing: a Guidebook for Healers and Clients” covers this subject in more detail along with many other exposures that sexual healers want to be aware of in order to best serve their clients and avoid re-traumatizing them.

Please go to: http://safesexualhealing.com and signup to the notification list and you’ll receive a 7 point checklist for clients of safe sexual healing.